


The Trials of Ben Solo

by VengeanceGOD



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Other, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28228587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VengeanceGOD/pseuds/VengeanceGOD
Summary: The end is just the beginning. Now one with The Force, Ben Solo must grapple with the life he led, and the choices he made. But he won't be alone.
Kudos: 6





	1. Everywhere and Everyone

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really wanted to write a story about Ben Solo, journeying through the galaxy, seeking redemption. Then he died. So we'll have to do it in the afterlife.

It wasn't dark, but he couldn't see. The room was filled with - Ben Solo couldn't find the words to describe what it was filled with. It wasn't smoke. Smoke doesn't form straight lines, and smoke doesn't change color. But it was ethereal, weightless. Honestly, Ben wasn't even sure it was a room. There was something like a floor, where he was laying. It felt solid, but it also felt...empty. Like if he really pushed on it, he would fall right through. And Ben had done enough falling lately.  
He sat up. Rey. Was she all right? He remembered seeing her below him, desperately pouring power he had never learned to use into her wounds. The spark of life in her had been fading, and Ben had forgotten all of his training from Master Luke. The hate that had fueled his entire adult life couldn’t have saved her, and saving her was all he had ever truly wanted.  
Memories flooded back. Her eyes opening. A too-brief kiss. And then – what? The energy he gave had been too much. He had used the technique she had shown him when she saved his life. After she killed him. The past seemed to rush at him all at once. But more than the past. Memories came to him. Memories he’d never had, of places he’d never been. Of people he’d never seen, technology beyond his wildest dreams. A thousand voices clamored in his head, and distantly, Ben heard a voice screaming in fear. He knew that voice. He had screamed like that when Master Skywalker had betrayed him. When Luke had come to kill him.  
But – was that what happened? When he focused on the memory, others came to him, too. He was Luke Skywalker, standing over a helpless boy and feeling fear for the first time in decades. He was a small droid, whirring in alarm as a dark shadow set fire to everything around him. For the first time, Ben Solo saw the birth of Kylo Ren through someone else’s eyes. The screaming was his own, forced to grapple with the horrors of everything he’d done.  
His mind expanded. Thinking of one horror led to another. He was a brash pilot, watching Kylo Ren murder a peaceful old man. He was a stormtrooper, watching the Supreme Leader destroy another piece of priceless equipment in a fit of childish rage. He was Rey. He was Rey in the moment that she truly saw him, when their hands had touched in the force. When she saw Ben Solo underneath the monster. And he was Rey, again, watching the man she had come to save turn against her, and take his place as Supreme Leader.  
He doubled over now, holding his stomach and screaming louder. The tears burned hot at his eyes, and the wound in his stomach screamed in pain. He was his father, watching his own son activate a lightsaber, feeling in his final moments like he’d failed once again. He was his mother, reaching out in a desperate last attempt, feeding the end of her lifeforce in one last gambit to save her son.  
A hand touched his shoulder. He sprang to his feet, his crimson lightsaber activating with a familiar crackle. Wait, no, that wasn’t right. He’d thrown that away. He sprang to his feet, his mother’s lightsaber glowing to sapphire life. No, no no no. Rey had that saber. Rey was alive. He was dead. He sprang to his feet, hands empty, eyes pleading.  
“It’s all right.” She said. Dressed all in white, hands raised, she stood before him. He looked in her eyes and saw – everything. A planet destroyed, and a family lost. A family found, and then lost again. He experienced it with her, the way she had. A word bubbled to his mind, one that he hadn’t used in decades.  
“Mom?”  
He ran to her with a cry, buried his face in her shoulder. She held him tighter than a tractor beam. “My boy.” She said, over and over. “You’re home. Ben, you’ve come home to me.”  
Millennia passed as they held each other in their arms and sobbed.  
Someday, she released him, and held him at arms length.  
“It’s a lot, I know.” She said, “How are you holding up?”  
“I see it all, Mom, and I don’t know why.” He sobbed.  
“It’s ok. It takes adjusting. They didn’t want to wake you up right away, but I had to see you.” She ran a trembling hand through his long hair. For a moment, he was a child again, and he saw the beautiful princess that had raised him standing over him. They were in their apartments on Coruscant, and she was doing up the tie on the dress up shirt he hated.  
“I can’t stop it. I keep…changing.” He said.  
She frowned at the little tie that never seemed to stay. “Stop wriggling. It’s ok. You’re in the Force, Ben. Just like the stories your Uncle Luke used to tell us. It’s a special trick that some Jedi can do. Luke taught me how. He learned from his master, who learned it from Yoda, who learned it from Qui-gon Jinn.”  
“But I didn’t know how.” The small Ben Solo protested. Then everything changed. He was in the cockpit of his starship. He was aiming his torpedoes at the bridge of a Mon Calamari Cruiser. She was the General now, dressed to perfection but sadder than he’d ever seen her. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t pull the trigger.  
The comm on his TIE’s control lit up, and he heard her voice from far away. “I know, son. And that’s why the transition is hard. It was hard for – well, you’ll see. Come back to me now.”  
“I don’t know how.” He said.  
“Just make a choice,” she said. “You’ve made the hard one already.”  
He was standing on the ruins of the Second Death Star, wind whipping through his hair, his father’s ghostly voice echoing in his ear. He threw his lightsaber away.  
The room and the smoke reformed. He was himself, Ben Solo, at the age that he died. His mother took him in her arms again.  
“Just hold on to me,” She said. “Let the memories come, and hold on.”  
He did, but this time, he could cry into his mother’s shoulder.  
Time passed. Or didn’t.


	2. The Trials of the Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now the real meat of the story begins, and we learn how Ben's journey will go.

“Masters, please.” The voice was that of an aged Jedi Master, but it was also that of a farm boy, desperate to go out with his friends. Ben couldn’t get a grip on when everyone was meant to be. Versions of Luke Skywalker he’d never seen were warring with the man who’d helped raise him. His mother squeezed his hand, and things began to focus again.  
He was in another place. It looked like the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, the place that had once been the Jedi Temple. But it also looked like a swampy planet, teeming with life and bursting with the force. And a little hut in a burning desert. And a strange planet, where a Father presided over a distant Sister and Brother. Ben had to close his eyes, this place was too many places.  
“I can do this,” Master Skywalker was saying. “Give me and Leia time. We can teach him to understand this place.”  
“Already understands, he does.” That was Yoda, it had to be. Ben had only ever met one member of the small green race, but Grogu had been a very active, mischievous person. This one radiated calm. When Ben looked at him, he saw only one version. An old man, happy to go to the end of his life. “Training, he must have. The Trials, he must face. Even here.”  
“Yoda is right, Luke.” The old man’s voice was kind. So was the young man he also was. He spoke to Luke like a son, and that could only mean it was Obi-wan Kenobi. “You and Leia are newly one with the Force as well. While you have greater control, Kyl- excuse me – Ben Solo needs someone with more experience. You both love him, and want the best for him. So do we.”  
“Luke won’t say it, so I will.” Leia said, steel in her voice. “The old Jedi ways are what got us into this mess. Twice. I won’t have my son learn them, even here.”  
“That is not our intention.” This voice was quiet. Ben Solo had no idea who this was, but both Yoda and Obi-wan Kenobi quietly deferred. He had long hair, and a beard, and kind eyes. There was a lilt to his accent Ben hadn’t heard before. “The Living Force has shown us many things. There were errors in the ways of the Jedi. Some I even tried to point out in life.” Yoda shifted, and somehow managed to look sheepish. “The one to train Ben Solo will be one who has learned the most from the place. None of us here can do it.”  
“Master Qui-gon, please stop beating around the bush. Which Master is going to teach my son?” Leia said.  
“A Master, he is not.” Yoda said. “Denied that rank, in life, he was. But his journey, similar to Ben’s. Teach him best, he will.”  
Luke paled. “Master, are you sure?”  
“We are.” Obi-wan said. “Neither of you knew him, as he was. Especially you, Leia, who never got to see him at all.”  
Her hand clenched Ben’s tighter. “I met him,” Leia said.  
“Meet him, you did not.” Yoda said, sadly. “Only his rage and pain, you met.”  
The cavern was silent for a long time. Ben finally opened his eyes, and found that his curiosity had caused the room to coalesce into a balcony, on a far off world. He thought it might have been Naboo? The architecture certainly fit.  
“Ben Solo will face the Trials, like any Jedi before him.” Obi-wan said. Ben’s chest tightened. What would a Jedi trial be like in this place? “In order to do that, he needs a master.”  
“Young Skywalker,” Yoda said. Luke looked up, but Yoda was looking past him. Behind Ben, his Mother, and his Uncle, there was a figure, kneeling, with his back to them. He wore dark robes of leather, and had similar length hair to Qui-gon. As he stood and turned around, Ben noticed a long scar over his right eye. Like the others, he shifted between times, from a young boy to the Jedi Ben saw before him. But there was one more form, a dark, imposing presence that seemed to cause the man physical pain each time it appeared. Ben tried to discern it, but it was all shadows. He felt his mother tense, and the man looked at her with sad eyes.  
“I could fill the universe with an apology, and it would never be enough for the pain I caused you,” he said. His eyes turned to Luke, “To both of you. I just want to make up for that. And I think Ben and I can do it, together.”  
Luke nodded, accepting. Slowly Leia breathed.  
“If you hurt him,” she said, “I don’t care if we’re already dead. I’ll kill you.”  
The man smiled, a crooked, cocky smile that reminded Ben of his father. Leia released Ben’s hand, and he took a step towards the newcomer.  
“Hey kid,” he said. “I’m your grandfather. You want to go get into some trouble?”


	3. Is This What You Want?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo faces his first lesson with his new master, Anakin Skywalker, within the force itself, and his first true test.

Ben Solo had seen the whole galaxy, he figured. Either he had been traveling to diplomatic function after function with his mother, or conquering them in the name of the First Order. He figured the universe held no new surprises. But his new Master snapped his fingers, and when Ben opened his eyes, they were sitting across from each other on floating rocks, twenty feet above a beautiful, golden lake.  
They had been sitting on the rocks for over an hour in silence. Ben was bored. His legs ached from not moving. His impatience was growing.  
“What should I call you?” he asked. His teacher, today, looked like a young man in his early twenties, with short brown hair and a long braid descending past his ear. For his own part, the Force had decided that today, Ben Solo would be the young man he was just before he left Master Luke’s tutledge. Dressed in Light Grey, with a mop of black hair, and a silver lightsaber at his side.  
“What do you mean?” His teacher asked.  
“Well – when I was training with Master Skywalker, I called him Master Skywalker. But if I call you Master Skywalker…I mean, that’ll get confusing.” He grinned at the man in front of him, the one he’d tried to please more than anyone his entire life. As a child, his Uncle Luke would sometimes come to stay in their apartments on Coruscant, and he would regale him with tales of Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight. The most powerful, the bravest, a grandfather he could be proud of. He never knew why his mother always left the room during these stories, why his father looked so tense. Later, he learned.  
They had all lied to him. They thought he couldn’t handle the truth. Well, look where it got them. They were dead now.  
No, no wait. That wasn’t him. That was Kylo Ren again. He took a deep breath, and shoved the demon he’d become back into the pit in his soul.  
“Well,” his teacher said, “I was never a Master, so that’s easier. You could just call me Anakin.” He returned the grin, and then seemed to have a thought. “Or Grandpa. Do you want to call me Grandpa?”  
Ben’s face felt hot and his chest felt tight. “Yes, yes, I’d like that,” he managed to squeak out.  
“Good, good.” Grandpa nodded. He looked twenty, but the way he held himself was much older. “Before we get started, I’m betting you have some questions.”  
A thousand. But what questions were Ben’s, and what questions were Kylo Ren’s? He didn’t trust himself enough yet to ask the right ones. A more broad approach would have to do.  
“I never learned the technique of becoming One with The Force. How am I here?” he asked.  
Anakin laughed. “Starting with the easy ones! I asked the same thing, ‘cause I never learned it either. The way Master Kenobi explained it to me was that it works two ways. Qui-gon figured out how to give yourself completely to the Force, but not until some time after he died. For a while, he was just…how did he describe it…a ‘residual memory’ bouncing around the universe. Then he managed to contact Yoda, and together they worked out the secret. When I died,” he grimaced, as if it still hurt. Again, the black shadow covered his body, just for a moment. “Obi-wan was waiting. He pulled me in, just like your mother did for you.”  
“My-“ Ben stopped. He hadn’t thought…  
“Oh, she hasn’t told you that yet. Sorry, kid. Leave it alone, maybe she doesn’t want you to think you didn’t get here on your own. Or maybe she’s saving it for a Life Day surprise or something.”  
That hit hard. Ben had thought coming here was because of his sacrifice. Why shouldn’t it be? He’d earned it. He’d thrown everything away, including his life, and he couldn’t even get a reward out of that? It was unfair!  
Grandpa was looking at him, intently. Had the sky gotten darker?  
“How does that make you feel?” His Master asked.  
“It’s unfair!” He exploded, and his voice sounded strange, distorted. “I worked so hard to change, and I never got a chance! I didn’t get to be the hero I deserved to be!” He screamed, and a red, three pronged lightsaber sprung to life in his hand. Kylo Ren swung.  
And the blade was met by a crimson twin.  
They were standing on the stones now, and they seemed to be whipping around, faster and faster. The golden lake has turned to fire. The man across from him was not his master. He was a sinister figure, wrapped in black and covered in blinking lights. Kylo Ren could see the reflection of the crossed sabers in the mirrored lenses of his mask.  
“NO.” The deep voice said. “Do not test me, boy.”  
The stones careened down a river of molten lava. Kylo Ren swung wildly, madly, smashing his blade over and over to find an opening. Darth Vader was calm, almost distracted. He parried each of Ren’s powerful blows with one hand.  
“You are nothing.” The Dark Lord of the Sith said. “A pale imitation. A little scared boy hiding inside a mask.”  
“Shut up!” yelled Kylo Ren. He leaped, desperate to find an opening. In a whirlwind of movement, he kicked his legs up in a flip. And Vader’s saber was waiting for him. In a flash, the Lord of the Sith had removed his arms and legs, leaving Kylo Ren stranded on a beach, catching fire.  
“All too easy.” Vader said, deactivating his lightsaber. Kylo Ren barely heard him. The entire world was fire and pain. He smelled his own burning hair, felt what was left of his body melting away.  
Vader knelt before him. “You wanted to be like me, Kylo Ren? This is what it takes. This is the depths of hatred and rage that forged the last of the Sith Lords. Tell me, is this what you want?”  
“I hate you!” Kylo Ren shouted.  
“Is this what you want?” Vader repeated.  
“I don’t deserve this!” Kylo Ren shouted.  
“Is. This. What you want?” Vader repeated, enunciating every syllable.  
“No.” Ben Solo said. The world faded away. They were still sitting on the rocks, above the golden sea, as if they had never moved at all.  
“The easy path failed both of us,” Anakin Skywalker said. “We focused on what we thought we deserved, not on what others needed. And it killed us both. Now we have to step on a new path. Together.”  
He held out his hand, and Ben took it. They began to raise into the sky.  
“That was the first lesson.” Grandpa said. “The next will be harder.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was writing this, Ben suddenly turned into Kylo and I had to go back and justify it a little more. I hope it doesn't appear too sudden.


End file.
